The Strange, Counterintuitive Properties of Water, Explained

Water is water, right ? When I was in school during the dark ages I was taught that water could exist in three states..liquid, Steam/vapor or Ice..It
freezes at 32F or zero C. unless it has salt, right... Nope the link has some interesting findings about water. www.seeker.com...

It’s important to understand that ice freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit only when it contains impurities. Absolutely pure water, on the
other hand, might not freeze despite sitting for years in subzero temperatures. In 2011, scientists discovered that water can remain a liquid until
around minus 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

Well that is something I never knew.. Also other liquids get denser/heavier as they get colder or freeze.. Not water.. Think of ice cubes floating in
your Iced Tea..

Now scientists in Sweden have learned that water’s counterintuitive behavior stems from its uncanny ability to exist in two liquid states.
Writing in the journal Science, they explained how sophisticated sensors helped them shed light on mysteries that researchers have spent more than a
century trying to unravel.

It is not a long article so I really can not post more... If interested check the article out... I found it worth a read..

Not too many decades ago, scientists thought and said that water was unique to earth, not found elsewhere as far as we knew. Sagan called it the
elixir of life and said where water was found we probably would find life. Now, it seems to be everywhere.

It does but it may not be observable depending on the cooling conditions, there is no accepted explanation to it but the other day I read it may be
that hot water have stronger clusters of hydrogen bonds than cold water, facilitating the nucleation of crystals.

originally posted by: skunkape23
It would really suck to jump into unfrozen water only to discover it was 55 below zero.
Talk about shrunken scrotums.

Look at those pictures of frozen animals trapped in ice. Imagine if they had jumped into what they thought was liquid water, and the minute they did
so, the water started turning to ice all around them.

The phase change requires a nucleation site, its a well known phenomenon. Similarly with liquids, surface tension plays a part.

Supercooled or Superheated water will freeze/start to boil if given long enough, just via random thermal chance... but yes the process initiates more
rapidly with impurities... any impurities... which fate would have it, is the normal state of play for the universe.

Great find! As critical as water is to human life one would think we'd know everything about it by now. The fact is water is a somewhat mystical
substance as it keeps eluding science in defining not just it's properties but it's very nature. Water carries not just chemical messages but mental
and emotional ones as shown by Masaru Emoto. I've often wondered if water didn't invent life, we are walking bags of water after all. The highest
concentrations of water are in the brain and eyes. One has to wonder.

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